The are actually a million reasons why this could happen. In the order of probability: bad device connected (not necessarily the one that gets disconnected), bad or corrupted drivers, corrupted windows installation, bad PSU, bad Mobo, short related to USB...

Reinstall the Asmedia drivers, run a "sfc checknow" to verify drivers and windows installation. Then start troubleshooting the devices. Use only 1 device connected. See if it still does it. If it doesn't start adding devices one by one. Also check event viewer for related errors like I/O errors or disconnection ones. If all that fails and it still happens with 1 device on a verified by sfc windows installation and reinstalled driver I'll tell you how to pull an xperf trace so I can take a look.

I've already been through a lot of trouble shooting and as you will see, I've also tried several USB devices. I did believe my troubles were solely with the front 19-pin headers and changing the front panel cable/connectors did change their behaviour...the disconnections seemed to stop altogether at the front. However I have now had a USB 3.0 HDD disconnect/reconnect at the back; obviously the issues goes a bit deeper than just a dodgy front panel cable.

Another issue is that at start up the mouse & keyboard are unresponsive for a noticeably long while, during which time the pc is seemingly communicating with the USB 3.0 devices connected to the ports; unlike other win7 PCs I've used the auto-run boxes pop up upon start up...this suggests the chipset isn't live until well into start up (this is with full usb connectivity/normal boot enabled in bios). One thing to note is that the 32gb SanDisk extreme USB3.0 pen drive I've only just bought, seems to cause the majority of the prolonged unresponsiveness (if no usb3.0 devices are connected, there is no unresponsiveness.

I realize that there maybe several issues at play here, this is why I ask if others are experiencing issues with there asmedia ports; the feedback would quickly allow me to gauge if this was a widespread thing, or if indeed I'm on my own. I'm shifting towards the idea that I possibly have a faulty board, or that there is a BIOS/firmware/driver issue. This wouldn't be the first time I'd of had an issue with an Asus board, in fact my two previous boards from them were faulty...a R3E and most recently the first RIVE I had was DOA with totally buggered Intel SATAIII ports!

The are actually a million reasons why this could happen. In the order of probability: bad device connected (not necessarily the one that gets disconnected), bad or corrupted drivers, corrupted windows installation, bad PSU, bad Mobo, short related to USB...

Reinstall the Asmedia drivers, run a "sfc checknow" to verify drivers and windows installation. Then start troubleshooting the devices. Use only 1 device connected. See if it still does it. If it doesn't start adding devices one by one. Also check event viewer for related errors like I/O errors or disconnection ones. If all that fails and it still happens with 1 device on a verified by sfc windows installation and reinstalled driver I'll tell you how to pull an xperf trace so I can take a look.

Totally don't get the attachment system on this forum...apparentley a .txt file is an invalid file type wtf?!

/SCANNOW Scans integrity of all protected system files and repairs files
with
problems when possible.
/VERIFYONLY Scans integrity of all protected system files. No repair operati
on is
performed.
/SCANFILE Scans integrity of the referenced file, repairs file if problems
are
identified. Specify full path <file>
/VERIFYFILE Verifies the integrity of the file with full path <file>. No re
pair
operation is performed.
/OFFBOOTDIR For offline repair specify the location of the offline boot dire
ctory
/OFFWINDIR For offline repair specify the location of the offline windows d
irectory

Windows installation checks out. It's quite possible that attaching a device on a faulty usb header to damage the board. It could be that your front panel header messed up. Can you check the PSU and also check the board doesn't make contact with anything metallic?

Windows installation checks out. It's quite possible that attaching a device on a faulty usb header to damage the board. It could be that your front panel header messed up. Can you check the PSU and also check the board doesn't make contact with anything metallic?

What are you saying, that a bad 19-pin to 2xUSB header could have damaged the board permanently? Would it have damaged the rear ports as well; I pretty sure they're on separate controllers?

The PSU is an almost brand new Corsair AX850, so I doubt it's at fault, plus the system seems to function okay otherwise. As for the motherboard, I made sure that I installed it with the brass stand-offs that came supplied with the case and all the cables are pu coated, so I think its unlikely it a short.

Do you still think it would be of benefit to send you that report you were talking of.

Again I ask, does anybody out there own the RIVE and have issues with the USB 3.0 ports?

Yes it's possible to have damaged the board. There is only 1 USB 3 controller. I have not seen any issues on USB 3 myself and I haven't seen any disconnection reports on the forum either apart from this one.

The fact that the PSU is new is irrelevant. Sometimes it happens that you get something faulty right out of the box.

Plug the usb 3 device and wait until disconnect. the stop both loggers by runnign these commands "Xperf –stop" and "Logman stop Usbtrace -ets"

Compress the trace files: usbtrace.etl, trace.etl (saved in the directories you run the commands from) and C:\kernel.etl (they will be big depending on how long it took to reproduce the issue), upload them somewhere and send me a pm with the link.